What happens to teamwork when AI becomes the first collabortor?
Project
Parsons Capstone Research
Timeline
Sep - Dec 2025
I explored how AI is changing the way designers think, create, and make decisions together. Our research uncovered a shift from co-creation to co-evaluation and identified where AI-supported workflows could better preserve collective thinking.
Scope of Work
Context
AI is changing more than how designers work.
As designers increasingly think and create with AI, we wanted to understand what this new Hybrid Intelligence means for teamwork, and how AI-native teams can evolve without losing the human values behind creativity and collaboration.
Research at a Glance
We looked at what Gen AI is changing, why it’s happening, and where we can intervene.
WHAT we found
AI-first, Human-react Pattern
We found 3 shifts in collaboration as AI enters the room before teammates do, shaped by individual expertise, team culture, and broader systemic forces.
WHY it matters
From Co-creation to Co-evaluation
As individual AI use grows, teams spend less time exploring ideas together and more time evaluating AI-generated outputs.
WHAT we built
explAIn: Team- AI ideation engine
Designed to bring shared reasoning back into ideation by making different perspectives and criteria visible to the team.
Research Planning
How we defined what was worth investigating
We broke down a broad context about AI and design teamwork into a focused research direction, a framework for data collection, and a research plan for gathering evidence.
So, WHAT is changing?
Design work becomes AI-first & Human-react, and that created 3 key shifts in how we work, think, and feel as a team.
What is driving the shift?
Organizational Culture and Individual Expertise Matters
Why "AI-first Human-react" feels inevitable?
Speed & Productivity Over Creative Exploration
AI is accerlating creative work by addressing common challenges such as starting with a blank page and managing time pressure. However, many AI tools are designed to maximize user engagement, offering direct answers and continuous suggestions, which can foster dependency. This shift towards productivity often overlooks the importance of collaboration and exploration, as current AI systems prioritize individual efficiency over collective insight, suggesting a need for a more balanced approach in their design and implementation.
How does it affect to Design Collaboration?
From Co-creation to
Co-evaluation
AI is not simply changing how quickly teams work.
It is shifting collaboration from thinking and creating together
toward individually generating and collectively evaluating outputs.
We created a map to show the evolution of design collaboration. This change goes beyond new tools; it transforms roles, alters collaboration methods, and impacts team members' emotional and cognitive experiences. Explore more by clicking the nodes on the left side of the map.
Discover
From collective framing to individual + AI framing
Select a card to explore research observations. Arrows organize the story; they do not represent measured causal effects.
Collective framing → Individual + AI framing
Changes to the workflow captured in the research synthesis.
This shift puts four core design values at risk.
Design Opportunity
How might we help teams feel they are discovering solutions together, not separately through AI?
We used the four values at risk to define what team-centered AI should support.
What we built
explAIn : Team-AI Ideation Engine for Shared Reasoning
explAIn turns individual AI-supported thinking into a shared space where teams can explore ideas, surface differences, and build shared criteria together.
Behind the research
How we chose where to intervene
To identify intervention areas, we mapped 20 specific design actions onto a 2x2 matrix based on cognitive and affective mechanisms. We designated the design actions in Quadrant 1 as the primary focus of our intervention.
PRIORITY CRITERIA
Team Brain
Does this action build shared understanding?
Team Heart
Does this action build trust and bonding?
